Every accident has one or more
identifiable causes. Determining where, when and how accidents occurs is
fundamental to understanding the causation and implementing preventive
measures. Once the circumstances and causes have been identified, effective
measures can be taken to prevent similar occurrences.
The majority of accidents incidents
are not caused by “Careless workers” but failures in control (either within the
organization or within the particular job), which are the responsibility of the
management (Abkduwitz, et al 2008)
Mark (2008) in his contribution
believe that 80 out of every 100 accidents are the fault of
the person, involved in the accident. According to him , unsafe acts causes four times as many accidents as unsafe
conditions.
The enumerated what he called “Sever
common causes of Accidents.
Taking shortcuts-Every day we make
decisions that we hope will make a job go faster and more efficient often times
when we think we are saving time, we
have to be careful that we aren’t jeopardizing our health or the health of one
our employees. Shortcuts that reduce the safety of the job aren’t shortcuts,
but are items that might increase our changes of injury.
Being
overconfident-confidence is a good thing much of a good thing. Believing that
nothing can happen to you is an attitude that can lead to improper method of
doing your work. And can always cause accident ignoring safety
procedures-Ignoring safety procedure, intentionally or unintentionally, can
endanged you or other employees. “Casual attitudes about safety can result in a
casualty” (Abkute et al 2008).
Starting
a job with incomplete instruction we know in order to a job safety and o it
right the first time; we need a complete set of instruction. Employee can make
a mess of a task or assignment because he didn’t have sufficient instructions
or the instruction weren’t clear. Caring out a
duty without adequate instruction is major sources of accident.
Poor
house keeping-anytime your site whether it is the quaintenance shops storage
areas, offices, etc. it can cause accident.
Kental
is tractions from work-Bring outside problems to work can keep you form
focusing on you job. If this happens, it can be a heard. Friends coming by
while you are at work can cause a distraction and can keep you form focusing on
the it at hand. Both of these incidents can put you into a hazardous situation
which is prone to accident.
Salla
(2009) referred to the causes of accident as accident sources. According to
him, they include such factors that can cause or contribute to an accident
endangering human health or safety. In this context, the term ‘ accident”
sources” is used to refer to potential and realized accident causes and
contributors. He examined accident sources using reason’s (1997) categories of causes
of organizational accidents. According to the Reason grouping, Technology-based
failures, which are independent of human actions, but have potential to cause
accidents by damage post- maintenance system reliability or human safety during
maintenance operations. Another cause of organizational accident according to
reasons is human-based failures. Which can be organizational factors or unsafe acts, while hazardous condition
include reason’s local workplace factors which corresponds to springs and
materials, and design and environment in perrour’s normal Accident Theory
(1999). Similarly, human-based factures refers to human performance at
different organizational levels. Thus, it includes workers (operations in
perrouis theory) and organizational factors. Such as management and
organizational factors. Such as management an supervision. Finally technology
based failures refers to technical failures and mal functions which can be the
reasons for maintenance, but also the
cause of accidents during maintenance operations. Following the
simplified grouping, technology-bused failures are the third group of interest,
along with hazardous conditions and human-based failures. The human-and
technology-based failures. Are basically failures or deficiencies in the
functioning of people or machines. Since both human-and technology-based
failures and hazardous conditions have the potential to cause accident during
maintenance work, they are referred to here as accident sources.
A system can be defined in various
ways, depending on the focus of interest. For examples, kircchsteiger (1999)
defined the system as “ an assemblage of elements (components ) that operate
together in some relationship to achieve a common objective (a plan0” this
definition conforms to perroui’s (1999) approach which fulfills kirchsteiger’s
definition of humans as elements in a system. According to perrous, “…..system
accidents, as with all accidents, starts with a component failure most commonly
failure of a part, say a valve or human operator:. The concept “social technical
system” reers to the technical system with the human operators (perrow, 1999; remain,
2001). Following perrous’ view, the concept of failure includes such human-
and/or technology-based deviations in a system that differ format he intended
behaviour/use and can lead to unwanted consequences. Such consequences can be
variations in product quality of system reliability, or deviations in
occupational safety. System here, refers to the object of maintenance, which can
be machine, process or a part of process.
Root causes are the initiating
factor that launch the chain of events leading to an unwanted outcome. In
common with any accident sources, a root cause can also be a human or
technology-based failure or hazardous condition. Gbenga (2003) emphasized that
there is no need investigating the cause of accident instead the effort and
time expended in should be used be on accident prevention. According to him
‘the majority of accident are near-miss and may never be reported. However, be
opposite that the cause of accident can be broken into two basic components,
unsafe condition and unsafe acts. Unsafe conditions are hazardous conditions or
circumstances that could lead directly to
an accidents. In the other hand, on unsafe act occurs when a worker ignores or
is not aware of a standard operating procedure or safe work practice designed
to protect the worker and prevent accidents.
The
table above illustrate unsafe act and condition
TABLE 1
SUMMARY OF UNSAFE ACTS AND CONDITION
|
Unsafe
acts
|
Unsafe
condition
|
|
Operating
equipment or machinery without permission
|
Lack
of guarding on machinery
|
|
Defeating
safety devices
|
defective
tools or equipment
|
|
Unsine
defective equipment
|
Crowding
workers into one area
|
|
Using
the wrong tool for the job
|
Inadequate
alam system
|
|
Not
using personal protective equipment
|
Fires
and explosions
|
|
Incorrect
lifting techniques
|
Poor
house keeping
|
|
Working
while intoxicated horseplay
|
Hazardous
atmospheres excessive noise inadequate lighting
|
Extracted
form
All
the examples of unsafe acts and condition given in table 1 are the result of
personal or job factors. Personal and job factors and the root causes of
accident. Gbenga 92003) further expand in Table above the personal and job
factors which can lead to an unsafe act or condition.
TABLE 2
PERSONAL AND JOB FACTORS
|
Personal
factor
|
Job
factor
|
|
Lack
of knowledge or skills due to inadequate training
|
Non-existent
or poorly developed work standard
|
|
Improper
motivation
|
Substandard
equipment design
|
|
Physical
limitation of the worker
|
Poor
equipment maintenace
|
|
Distractions
which interfere with the worker’s ability to concentrate on their job
|
Purchases
of substandard equipment, tools, and materials
|
|
|
Unsual
increase in equipment usage
|
The
personal factors described in above table generally lead to unsafe acts and the
job factors are likely to contribute to the unsafe conditions.
Dems et al (2012) examined what they
called the myths about industrial safety as an assumption of the causes of
industrial accident. They are:
Human
error
Human error and unsafe behaviour
accounts for almost 90% of all accidents, including those caused by
inexperienced and unskilled workers. The most common cause of accidents or
industrial accidents is often attributed to human error such as operational
error, judgmental error, or job related error, all of which are caused by human
characteristics. Most of these errors are said to be associate with
psychological factors affecting human behaviour. The disaster caused by human
error are too serious, because the automation in the construction is difficult
and a lot of workers support the construction work. The larger the number
workers who work on the site is, the higher the possibility that human errors
caused accidents Denis (2012).
A number of books and papers have
been written about human error, an increasing number of them openly question
the simple minded use of the term (e.g Dekker, 2005; Hollnagel and Amalberti,
2001, Woods et al; 1994) yet as the above announcement shows, the myth of human
error as the cause of most accidents prevails. Human error is also a
fundamental part of many accident causes. This is because if human error or
mistakes form individual workers should be avoided industrial accident would
have been minimized in our working places (Lola 2001).
Non-compliance
with procedure can be said or referred as references for how to carry out a
given task, for instance as a memory aid, or as guides for decisions in
situations where people have little or no experience. Procedures vary in
nature, size and complexity and may range from a 6-line cooking receipt to
entire bookshelves of ring binders in control rooms of nuclear power plants.
Here, industrial accident can be minimized if these procedures is strictly
followed. But in a case where people decide to ignore the instruction and to it
their own way, they will likely have accident. And in any case, it is the duty
of the management to provide the workers with safety instruction to enable them
not only have the job well done but not to jeopardize with safety.
Another way accident can be Denis et
al is lack of protection. In manufacturing industries, some of the materials or
equipments used can be dangerous or hazardous to the health of the worker. It is the duty of the top management to make appropriate
provision for protective equipments (hard hats goggles. etc) against such
hazards. For instance, welders seldom have to be remined to use their welding
shield. This is simple because not using a shield leads to acute pain in the eyeballs
within a matter or hours due to the intense UV light emission during welding.
Onyeka (2004) in his examination of
the cause of accident posit that they are five major causes of accident in a
working place. He attributed the causes to management carelessness to employee
welfare. The five reasons according to him are:
Poor
leadership from the top: The inability of the top management to coordinate the
activities of the organization in a proper way will always lead to inadequate
protection of the worker in an industry
thereby endanger their lives.
* Inadequate supervision: Supervision
who are unable to pay adequate attention to the welfare of their subordinate,
will end up allowing accident which could possible endanger the life of their
subordinate or supervisees.
* Insufficient
attention to the design of safety into the system or careless attitude.
* An
unsystematic approach to the identification, analysis and elimination of
hazards in production industry will always keep accident reoccurring in organization.
* Poor
training facility and employee motivation management should be responsible in
training of the employees on how procured equipment should be used. Inadequate
training of employees especially in the area of new technologies could endanger
the life of workers and at the same time cause
dexterous damage in the organization.
SAFETY
How to develop a safety programme in
an organization
Safety
should be an integral part of the total buiness activities of an enterprises.
This should be reflected in the overall management instruments for individual
sits. Safety should be strategic in natural and should be prioritized in the
organisation’s programme.
To achieve a safe workplace, the
employees as well as management and contractors must belief that safety is a
critical part of the business. This includes the intention to act consistently
with this brelief, and the genuinely safe behaviour by all. Such a result is
founded in the safety culture created by
management in cooperation with other employees.
The starting point for establishing
a good safety programme is to identify
leaders in organsiation who should be completely responsible for safety, the
initiation of effort, promote and co-ordinate the introduction of safety programme, ensure
effective communication and generally oversee the programme’s implementation.
The leaders here, should involve management. It is critical to the success of
the effort that sernior managers of the enterprises who are in a position to
take action are committed to the safety programme. Davide (2005) staffs that
should be allowed into this stage should be those technical experts and those
with hand-on knowledge. According to Kalhill (2003) it is important that the
safety programme reflects and detailed understanding of the hazards associated
place and the types of data collected on a formal and informal basis to morntor
safety. The therefore concluded that safety team leaders should include/or have
acess to safety managers, engineers, operators and other members of staff with
an understanding of relevant operations and safety related policies, procedures
and practices. Kalhill also emphasized on the importance of resources
committed. According to him, to development and implement and effective and
efficient safety, there need to be “sufficient support and resources” the team
should evaluate the implementation costs and business benefits.
Another step according to David
(2005) is identification of the subject to be addressed by the safety
programme. As soon as the team and other arrangements are in place. He believe
that each enterprise will have different hazards and risks management systems,
activities, monitoring programme and corporate culture. Therefore each enterprises
will need to decide on its own priorities, in order to choose the appropriate
indicators and the way thing will measured. One of the ways of do this is by
looking at each process in your enterprise and identifying critical hazards.
Analysis relevant processes on a step- by stay basis will help to identify
potential hazards. For each of the hazards, potential review the related safety
policies procedures and practices that are in place, and identity those that
are more critical to risk control or most vulnerable to deterioration over
time.
The third step believed to be very
important step by David (2005) is identification of outcome and activities in
dictator. This step will help the term to know whether programme is working as expected.
According to him, outcome indicators are designed to collect data and provide
results to help you answer the broad question of whether the issue of concern
is achieving the desired result. Ie the safety policy, procedure than practice
that is being monitored. Thus, an outcome indicator can help measure the extent
to which a targeted safety policy, procedure or practice is successful.
An effective safety performance
indicator conveys clear results regarding safety performance to those with the
responsibility and authority to act on matters related to safety.
The fourth stage in the development
of safety progrmme in an organization is known as activities indicator.
Activities indicator simply means to monitor the key issues of concern
identified in step two. According David (2005) activities indicators relates to
you identified outcome indicators and helps to measure whether critical safe
policies procedure and practices are in place to achieve the desired outcomes.
Whereas outcome indicators are designed to provide answers about whether you
have achieved a sagely outcome, activities indicators are designed to provide information about why or why not the outcome
was achieved. Therefore, well-designed activities indicators provide insights
needed therefore indicators provide insights needed to correct policies
procedures and practices when the desired outcome is not being achieve.
Collection and reporting of data is
the fifty stage in developing a good safety programme in an organization which
he called David (2005) explains that the
major concern at this stage should be the procedure for the collect in of data
for example, data some what the reports will look like as well as roles and
responsibilities for collection and reporting. Should be specified the added
that in “evaluating data sources, it is often usual to review data that are
already available and decide whether the could be used to support the
programme”. Existing data may have been collected for other activities such as
quality control of business efficiency. If useful existing data are identified,
it is important to evaluate whether the data are adequate quality for safety
programme and to organize an/or apply the data to achieve the purpose of the
safety programme Kalhill (2003), agreed with David and added that data
collection produces should take into account the frequency with which data
should be collected and result reported in light of the functions of each
indicator relative to safety performance. Data should be collected and results
reported at a frequency necessary to
endure that they an detect changes in safety critical systems in time to
action. In addition, reports should be provided in a timely manner to
management, a propirate safety officer and or other relevant employees with
responsibility for active on a specific safety issues addressed by the indicators.
Furthermore, Kalhill (2003) listed there features of good presentation of safety report
(1) Report should be as simple as possible in
order to facilitate understanding of any deviations form tolerances and to
identify any important trents.
(ii) A good report should also all the reader
to understand the links between outcome indication and associated activities
indicators.
(iii) It should also take into account the target
audience.
Acting of on the findings or report
is the sixty stage in the development of safety programme in an organization.
Here, senior managers, safety management personnel, engineer operators and
other relevant employees should receive the result of the programme in a timely
way and should follow up adverse finding to fix defects in the associated
safety policies procedures and practices. When a deviation is noted, it may
also the safety programme it self its, where there it was define well enough to
detect the safety issue of concern and whether improvements can be made to the
indicators thus, deviations detected in using safety report represent an
opportunity for learning and adjusting (David 2005) Rosky (2008) posit that
while implementing safety programme you may also encounter situations where
outcome and activities indicators associated with the source subject provide contradictory results. When
this occurs, it is indication that one or both indicators are not working as
intended. The indicators should be reviewed and redefined as necessary.
The last stage in the development of
safety programme according David (2005) is evaluation and refinement of safety
performance. Developing an effective safety programme demand periodic and
evaluation. According to him, developing an effective safety programe is an
iterative process and the programme should be refined as experience is gained
or new safety issues of convern are identified as a result of the instructions
of new technology of methods. Periodic review help to ensure that the
indicators are well-defined, continue to address priority area f concern, and
provide the information need to monitor safety measures and to respond to
potential safety issues. In addition, it help toidentify when specific
indicatios are no longer needed. For example, the issues of concern can change
over time due to improvements in safety or insinghts into previously
underntified issues. Some of the changes may result form. Improvement in
management systems; alternation in plant design, introduction of new
technologies, equipment or processes, or changes in management or staffing.
Smith 92007) advice industrial
operators at this stage to always share information with other companies
especially those that have successfully implemented safety programme. These can
be other enterprises in your same industry or other industries with hazardous
installation. Industry associations can help make these connections and promote
overalls improvements in the field of safety performance.
Andrews et al (2001) explained the importance
of cooperation with the public and other stakeholder sin developing and maintain
good safety programme. According to them creating and maintaining good confident
relationship with the public and other stake holders I essential to ensuring
confidence in the safety of the enterprise. Among these stakeholder are
the representatives of community,
hospitals and other health/medicals ervices schools nursing homes environmental
groups and media. Andrews et al (2001) further stated that co-operation with
external stakeholders is not always an easy task and can only be reached if the
enterprises, acts in an open and pro-active manner, maintaining a continuous
dialogue with interested parties. Information should be shared concerning the chemical and chemical processes
at the enterprise, including safety measure used to prevent chemical
accidents/incidents top management should demonstrate to the public their
personal interest and commitment to safety issue.
In the case of other enterprises,
Andrews et at believe that experience with safety-related issues should be
shared in order that problems encountered by one enterprise are not repeated in
order enterprises. Those that could benefit from such information sharing are
those enterprises within the same geographical area; those with the same sector
of the industry, those using similar type of manufacturing processes and using
the same type of chemicals and/or those with a producer-user relationship.
Some of the benefit derivable form
such cooperation include:
Learning
from each other in general, especially with respect to avoiding accidents.
* setting a general level of safety
performance
* Spreading knowledge of the state of
the a
* Offering assistance to small and
medium-size enterprises (SMES)
Creating
joint effort and funding to address major concern;
Co-operating
in conversations with relevant authorities and
* improving chemical accident preparedness
and response.
They concluded that enterprises
should prepared to response to emergencies because despite all efforts to avoid
accidents, there must be possibilities of emergencies and accidents. Therefore,
emergency plans should be developed,
including both an enterprise internal plan (on-sire emergency plan) which is
generally the responsibility of the enterprises and external plan (off-site
emergency plant) which is generally the responsibility of the public
authorities. The two plans should be coordinated with each other in order to be
able to efficiently and properly deal with possible accidents. Close
co-operation between enterprises and public authorities is necessary both in
establishing the plans and in relate training. There should also a cooperation
with the public and stake holders.
In case of an accident that is too
big or difficult for the affected enterprises to handle, the resources of the
enterprises located clode-by or enterprises with special qualification to assist
should be used to mitigate the emergency. There should also possibilities to
coordinate on a more general level between enterprises dealing with similar
facilities and products. In this case, the aspects of consider are: sharing of
equipment locally sharing of personal in formatting and expertise for
limitation a local level and joint personnel, resources and equipment for
mitigation of transport accidents. The initiative to coordinate and optimize
resources could either come from the enterprises themselves, but would normally
be co-ordinate by some community organization or public authority.
Telos (2005) in his contribution
said that each enterprises should have a system for internal reporting and
dealing with all events which deviate from normal conditions and which could
have adverse effects on safety, health, the environment or property (called
“accident” for purpose of documentation) this is the basis from which enterprises
can learn form experience to avoid repeating similar dangerous occurrences. In
additons, events which actually lead to measurable consequences-damage to
people, the environment or property-should all be reported and handled promptly
and coefficient. It would obviously be the goal to have as few as possible of
these kind of events.
Events which do not lead to any
measurable consequences, but which could have resulted in consequences, had the
circumstance been different (Near misses”) or other learning experience should
also be reported and handled in a similar way. The objectives should also be to
minimize such events however, efforts should be made to have as many of them as
possible reported in order to learn experience. This is of a particular concern
because there is the tendency not to report events when there are no
consequences.
All Stake Holders Role
For effective accident prevention,
industries should be ready to cooperate with the community where hazardous
installations are located. Communication and cooperation should be based on a
policy openers, as well as the shared objective of reducing the likelihood of
accident and mitigating the adverse affects that occur. One important aspect is
that the potentially affected public should receive information needed to
support prevention and preparedness objectives and should have the opportunity
to participate in decision-making related to hazardous installations, as
appropriate.
The
role of industrial mangers and labour
* All enterprises that produce, use,
store or otherwise handle hazardous substances should undertake, in cooperation
with other stakeholder the hazard identification and risk assessment needed for
a complete understand of risks to employee, the public, the environment and
property the event of an accident. Hazard identification and risk assessment
should be taken from the earliest stages of design and construction, throughout
operation and maintenance, and should address the possibilities of human or
technological failure as well as rleases
resulting form matural disasters or deliberate acts. Such assessments should be
repeated periodically and whenever there are significant modifications to the
installation.
* Another important role by industrial
operators and labour is the “promotion of safety culture”. They should promote
a safety culture that is known and accepted throughout the enterprises. For
safety culture to be effective, it requires visible top-level management
commitment and the support and participation of the employees.
Establish
safety management systems and monitor/review their implantation. Managing
hazardous installation effectively requires industrial managers to use
appropriate technology and processes and well as establishing an effective
organizational structures which will contribute in the reduction of accident.
In order to ensure the adequate of safety management system, it is critical to
have appropriate and effective review schemes to monitor the system.
Producers
of equipment should try as much as possible utilize safer technology in
designing and operating hazardous installation me application of this
methodology will help to minimize or reduce the likelihood of accident and its
consequences. Eg installations should take into an account the following, to
the extent that they would reduce risks: Minimizing to the extent practical
the quantity of hazardous substances
used; replacing hazardous substance with less hazardous ones; reducing
operating pressure and/or temperatures; improving inventory control; and using
simpler processes. This could be completed by the use of back-up system.
Another important point in
preventing accident is change management. The management of change should be
the responsibility of top management in an organization. Any significant changes
such as changes in process technology, staffing and procedures, as well as
maintenance repairs, start-up and shutdown operations, increase the risk of
accident. It is therefore particularly important to be aware of this and to
take appropriate safety measure when significant changes are planed before they
are implemented.
Prepare for any accident that mighty
occurred it is important to recognize that is not possible to eliminate risk of
an accident. Therefore it is critical to have appropriate preparedness planning
in order to minimize the likelihood and extent of any adverse effects on
health, environment or property. This includes both on-site preparedness
planning and contributing to off-site planning.
Assist others to carry out their
respective roles and responsibilities.
To
this end, management should co-operate with al employees and their
representatives, public authorities local communities and other members of the
public. In addition management should strive other to assist enterprises
(including supplier and customers) to meet appropriate safety standard.
* 4Work towards continues improvement.
It is obvious that it is not possible to eliminate all risks of accident at
hazardous installations. One goal should be to improve in the technology, management
systems and staff skills in order to move closer toward the ultimate objective
zero accidents. In this regard, management should seek to learn from past
experiences with accident and near miss both within their own enterprises and
at other enterprises.
Labour:
In accident prevention, labour plays a very important role in making sure that
they work in relatively safe working environment. The three major ways they can
do this effectively are:
* Act in accordance with the enterprises
safety culture, safety procedures and training. In the discharge of their
responsibilities, labour should comply with all the procedures and practices
relating to accident prevention, preparedness and response, in accordance with
the training instructions given by their employer. All employees(including
contractors) should report to their supervisors any situation that they believe
could present significant risk.
* make every effort to be informed, and
to provide information and feedback to management. It is important for all
employees, including contractors to understand the risks in enterprises where
they work, and to understand how to avoid creating or increasing the levels of
risk. Labour should to the extent possible provide feedback to management
concerning safety-related matters. In this regard, labour and their
representatives should work together with management in the development and
implementation of safety management system, including procedures for ensuring
adequate education and training/retraining of employees labour and
representatives should also have the opportunity to participate in monitoring
and investigations by the employer, or
by the component authority, in connection with measures aimed at preventing,
preparing for and responding to chemical accidents.
* Be proactive in helping to inform and
educate your community.
When
employees are well educated at hazardous installation it can act as important
safety ambassador within their community.
Public authorities is also a very
important stakeholder with the role of making the necessary law that will
grantee the safety of individuals. Some of the ways this could be down are:
* seek to develop, enforce and
continuously improve policies, regulations and practices. It is important for
public authorities to establish policies, regulations and practices, and have
mechanisms in place to ensure their enforcement. Public authorities should also
regularly review and update, as appropriate, policies, regulations and
practices. In this regard, public authorities should keep informed of and take
into accouter relevant departments. These include changes in technology,
business practices and levels of risks in their communities, as well as
experience in implementing existing laws and accident case histories.
* The next aspect is motivating stake
holders to fulfill their roles and responsibilities.
Public authority should use the
inflencce to motivate other stakeholders to recognize the importance of
accident prevention, preparedness’ and responses, and to take the appropriate
steps to minimize=se the risks of accidents and this occurs.
Public
authorities should also monitor the industries to ensure that risk are properly
addressed.
Public
authorities should establish mechanisms for monitoring hazardous installations
to ensure that all the relevant laws and regulations are being followed, and
that the cement of a safety management system are in place and functionary
properly, taking into account the nature of the risk at the installations.
Help
ensure that there is cooperation and communication among stakeholders. Public
authorities have an important role in ensuring that appropriate information is
provided to, and received by, all relevant stakeholders. They a have to educate
the public concerning the installation of hazardous instrument so that they
will understand what to do at any particular point in time especially in the
event of any accident.